


Requiem

by jedicallie (writergirlie)



Series: Callista Returns series [1]
Category: Star Wars: New Republic Era - Various
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-12
Updated: 2010-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:14:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirlie/pseuds/jedicallie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after leaving Luke Skywalker on Nam Chorios, Callista Masana returns to her home planet of Chad to make peace with her past. (AU, Prequel to my longer fic, <i>Out Of Darkness</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiem

_What we leave behind_

_Lives on in spite of us_

_Indeed, because of us_

_Assuaging guilt, easing a burden_

_Allowing us to move forward,_

_Without remorse…_

_A Jedi must not look back._

_Must never look back.._

_\-- Master Djinn Altis_

 

 

It wasn’t as though Callista had expected much of anything to be left of her family’s ranch.

 

With no heirs to take it over, it would have been left abandoned after Papa and Uncle Claine were long gone—drifting idly along the Algic current with no one to guide it, battered by the nightly tides and ravaged by the elements and the wystoh. Still, nothing could have possibly prepared her for the sight of it now, what little of it there still was: the hull of their old ark bleached by the sun and saltwater, rusty and punctured with holes all along its sides, and algae clinging to the splintered remains of the floating dock where she’d spent so much of her childhood skidding across to catch a glimpse of the cy’eens splashing past.

 

She felt her breath catch in her throat, press against her lungs, the beginnings of tears mingle with the spray of the sea. She hadn’t expected much, no… but she hadn’t expected this, either.

 

Long ago, she had dreamed of taking Luke here. She wondered if he would have loved the water, the tang of salt on his tongue. Once, they had lost track of time on a walk through the jungles of Yavin, getting themselves caught in a sudden rainstorm. She remembered his boyish laugh as they ran to seek shelter from the onslaught of the downpour, remembered kissing him breathlessly, his body pressing into hers against a tree, and him telling her that even after all these years, rain still felt like something of a miracle to a desert boy like him.

 

She shut her eyes and drew in a long, slow drag of breath. The time had passed for this. And there was certainly no point in bringing his memory to the forefront of her consciousness when she had spent these past five years trying to outrun it. Master Djinn used to tell them that a wound could not heal as long as the blood was fresh. It seemed she still hadn’t learned to stop the blood from flowing.

 

Coming back to Chad was supposed to be the beginning of her healing—finally. At least, that was what she had told Captain Ugmush. The Gamorrean had tried to dissuade her from leaving, warning her, in her broken Basic, that running away never made anyone’s heart mend. But it wasn’t the pain of losing Luke that she needed to make peace with—she’d long accepted that nothing would be able to dull that loss—rather, it was the pain of leaving this place behind in the first place.

 

Papa tried to understand, but he simply couldn’t; perhaps he thought he had failed her in some way, not giving her reason enough to stay. The call of the Force was never by choice, she had told him.

 

The moons had risen now, pulling along the tides. The ranch was beginning to drift away. Soon it would travel further down the current, where it would be out of sight within a matter of days. Callista followed its slow, rhythmic motion with her eyes. It would be another year before it would reappear in this parts again, and she wondered whether she would still be here to await its return.

 

She had come home, in a different time, as a different person. It would be a long time before she would feel she belonged once more.__


End file.
